Nicole MacDonald’s “Last Days of Chinatown” @ Hyperallergic

DETROIT — While some documentary filmmakers travel far and wide in search of a story to capture, artist Nicole MacDonald began her documentary process in the most straightforward possible way: by observing the human traffic visible through the window of her residence in theCass Corridor neighborhood of Detroit.

“I’ve been watching the alley behind my house for a couple of years now,” narrates MacDonald, in a measured, smoky voice that relays 100 years of Cass Corridor history. A lifelong Detroiter, MacDonald’s own father grew up in a house in the Lower Corridor, and he is one of many old-school residents who make an appearance in MacDonald’s approximately 65-minute documentary, Last Days of Chinatown, painstakingly constructed over the course of the last five years.